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After hitting midtown, the East Village, and Greenpoint in October and then bouncing around town, HBO series The Deuce is back in the East Village and Lower East Side tomorrow for what looks to be an epic shoot. Tomorrow, David Simon’s forthcoming show about twin brothers (both played by James Franco) involved in the mob and porn worlds of ’70s New York is taking over East 7th Street from First Avenue to Shevchenko Place; the lower portion Avenue A; and parts of Rivington, Essex, and Norfolk Streets.

The debut book from Joshua D. Fischer – and the first to come from Bedford + Bowery – is called“Meet the Regulars: People of Brooklyn and the Places They Love.” To get you psyched for this hardcover collection of photos and interviews (out in May from Skyhorse Publishing), here’s another new installment of the series.

(Photo: Phil Provencio)

With peanut shells littered on the floor beneath his boots, an American flag draped over a dirty tin wall to his right, and vintage country music flyers posted behind him, Richard Mark Jordan praises the authenticity and culture of Skinny Dennis. He calls the owners of this Williamsburg honky tonk bar “wizards” for their curatorial skills. And they must be, seeing as they cast a spell on Rich and got the Texas-born Brooklynite to appreciate the South as he never had before.

Vinyl, the Scorsese-Jagger production we’ve been looking forward to with bated coke-breath ever since it filmed in the East Village, finally hit HBO last night with an epic two-hour episode, and the critical reaction has been pretty much love it or hate it. Even if you’re with the East Village’s own Richard Hell in the latter camp, you’re probably going to watch at least another episode or two, just to bask/wallow in the ambience of the early-’70s New York City music scene. So here are some fun facts about the show that we’ve culled from around the net, and from our own archives.Keep Reading »

If you walked down East 2nd Street today you may have noticed retro cops wandering around for the filming of the HBO show Deuce, but unfortunately no sign of James Franco and his porn ‘stache. As with last week’s shoot, there were some pretty sweet vintage rides, though.

Franco alert! After time-warping West 30th Street last week, David Simon’s HBO pilot, The Deuce, is filming in the East Village tomorrow, per signs spotted on Avenue A. Given that the series, starring James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, is supposed to be about the rise of the porn industry in ’70s Times Square, we’re not sure what the production will be doing between East 1st and 2nd Streets, well away from the East Village’s historic corridor of smut. While we wait to find out, the Daily Mail has some photos of Franco sporting a classic porn-star stache during last week’s shoot.

We don’t always go to midtown, but when we do, we come back with photos from the set of David Simon’s new HBO pilot about the ’70s porn industry. The Deuce has lined West 30th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, with vintage cars, and has transformed 242 West 30th into an old-school Korean restaurant. We didn’t spot the pilot’s stars, James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but we did get an eyeful of vintage phone booths and mailboxes. We haven’t seen those since… well, Scorsese’s HBO show. All very authentic except for those ’70s-era trash piles, which upon closer inspection contained copies of this week’s newspapers. Don’t worry, Dave, we won’t tell.

On Friday a tipster sent us this photo from the set of Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming HBO show, now titled Vinyl. As you can see, Marty meticulously recreated the legendary Max’s Kansas City on 19th Street, between Park and Broadway, just a couple of blocks from its former location on the corner of 18th and Park Avenue South (now home to a CVS). The clubhouse of Andy Warhol (who would’ve turned 87 today) was honored with a 50th anniversary reunion show at Bowery Electric in June.

Scorsese’s show about New York’s ’70s and ’80s rock and roll scene, which filmed in the East Village a couple of weeks ago, now has a teaser, below. And according to a sign we spotted at 56th Street and Seventh Avenue, it’ll be filming near that corner this Friday.

If you’re going through Girls withdrawal (it’s been almost a month since the season ended), the Tribeca Film Festival has just the methadone you’re looking for. Not only do a couple of the show’s producers appear in Very Semi-Serious and Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (Bruce Eric Kaplan is also a New Yorker cartoonist and Judd Apatow is a National Lampoon fan) but Adam Driver and Zosia Mamet are the leads in Hungry Hearts and Bleeding Heart, respectively. Both are dark psychological thrillers in which the characters get caught up with a deeply disturbed romantic partner and run to their parents for help. Spoiler alert: neither of these films end well. But are either of them heart-worthy?

At SXSW last month, Brett Morgen got right to the point as he introduced his new documentary about Kurt Cobain, who died 21 years ago this past Sunday: “I know a lot of you have been waiting over 20 years to see some of this footage,” he told over 1,000 people at Austin’s Paramount Theatre. “So let’s just start the fucking movie.”

Here’s the perfect top to sport at your Girls season finale viewing party next weekend (you know, the one where you eat GQ-approved snacks and see how many pals can squeeze into your tub).

Strand sells this very soft “Lena Dunham Birthday Suit Tee,” ($54.95, by Clashist), depicting the multi-talented mogul-under-30 in various states of undress, including the memorable game of ping-pong she played with Patrick Wilson at his character’s Williamsburg manse. This shirt takes up Strand shelf space alongside another tee that that Lena would definitely endorse (“If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t f*ck them.” –John Waters), plus Clashist’s James Franco ankle socks ($19.95). Not to mention Dunham’s memoir.

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About B + B

Bedford + Bowery is where downtown Manhattan and north Brooklyn intersect. Produced by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in collaboration with New York magazine, B + B covers the East Village, Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and beyond. Want to contribute? Send a tip? E-mail the editor.